Download Your beggarly commerce! Enlightenment European

Your beggarly commerce!
Enlightenment European views
of the China trade
Ashley Eva Millar
This paper examines the European confrontation with and conceptualization
of the China trade in the early modern world, and in particular during the
Enlightenment. International trade was of central importance to Enlightenment
conceptions of wealth. As Daniel Defoe – the famed champion of the merchant
class – wrote, “the rising greatness of the British nation is not owing to war and
conquests, to enlarging its dominion by the sword, or subjecting the people of
other countries to our power; but it is all owing to trade, to the increase of our
commerce at home, and extending it abroad”1. European philosophers and a
broader set of commentators that included popular geographers and merchants
hotly debated international trade. These debates portrayed China as having a
more cautious, restricted view of foreign trade. No lesser authority than Adam
Smith succinctly expressed this view:
The Chinese have little respect for foreign trade. Your beggarly commerce! was the
language in which the Mandarins of Pekin used to talk to Mr. de Lange, the Russian
envoy, concerning it. Except with Japan, the Chinese carry on, themselves, and in their
own bottoms, little or no foreign trade; and it is only into one or two ports of their
kingdom that they even admit the ships of foreign nations. Foreign trade therefore
is, in China, every way confined within a much narrower circle than that to which it
1 D. Defoe, The Complete English Tradesman (London: printed for Charles Rivington, 1726 [1725]), 382-3.
european views of the china trade
205
would naturally extend itself, if more freedom was allowed to it, either in their own
ships, or in those of foreign nations2.
John Hobson labeled the traditional narrative that China turned inward during
the Ming Dynasty as “China’s great leap backward”3. Proponents of this view
maintain that China’s decline relative to Europe began in 1434 when the Emperor
Xuande, following the ‘Confucian traditions’ of his father, the Emperor Hongxi,
imposed restrictions on foreign trade and navigation. According to this view, by
the end of the eighteenth century Europeans recognized the limitations of the
Chinese system of political economy, particularly with regards to international
trade. Adam Smith’s advocation of the free market in 1776 and the 1793 failed
British Embassy to China under Lord Macartney led to a dominant image of an
arrogant China, resistant to the progress of the modernising European world4.
Frustration with Chinese policies of isolation, however, dated as far back
as Ancient Rome, thus was not a reaction to the rising European faith in the
mutual benefits of free trade expressed most famously through Smith. Further,
the narrative of Chinese isolation was only part of a wider eighteenth century
discussion of the China trade. In fact, early modern European observers and
commentators were not assured of their superiority and reflected a range of views
on the China trade beyond simple frustration. Recent scholarship examines the
interaction between the Qing Dynasty and European states as the encounter of
imperial forces, indicating a comparable balance of power5.
This paper begins by examining the early modern European sources of
information and commentary on the China trade. These sources include the
first-hand reports about China (largely written by European missionaries, men
of war, merchants and emissaries); the works of Enlightenment philosophers;
and the popularisers of information primarily in world geographies. European
2 A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. E. Cannan (New York:
Bantam Dell, 2003), 864-5.
3 J. M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), 62.
4 David Porter describes the eighteenth-century encounter between the Europeans and the
Chinese, where the former believed in the importance of international trade, and the latter strictly
limited international commerce, leading to “a widespread perception among British observers
that an unnatural tendency toward blockage and obstructionism was an integral, defining
feature of Chinese society as a whole”. D. Porter, “A Peculiar but Uninteresting Nation: China and
the Discourse of Commerce in Eighteenth Century England”, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 33 (19992000), 181-199; James L. Hevia describes the historiographical tradition (from Euro-America as
well as China) of viewing the early modern trade relationship between China and Europe as a
clash between tradition and modernity. J. L. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and
the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 242; Joanna Waley-Cohen
argues that Sinophilia ended, in part, because “the restrictive Canton system of trade went
directly against the free world market advocated by Adam Smith in 1776”. J. Waley-Cohen, The
Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 92- 99.
5 See Hevia’s Cherishing Men from Afar.
206
ambitions of achieving a bountiful trading relationship with China, met
with the reality of Chinese restrictions. The interplay between optimism and
rejection led to a consistent narrative of frustration in many European sources.
The remainder of this paper analyses the other prominent narratives attached
to the China trade. In addition to a view of Chinese restrictions on foreign
trade, which certainly existed, three additional themes were conspicuous.
First, Europeans attempted to understand China’s unique ability to restrict
international trade. Second, they identified obstacles to trade that originated
in Europe. Finally, these sources discussed the nature of the trade that did exist,
debated the implications of the balance of trade with China, and demonstrated
an awareness of China’s place in a global trading system. This paper concludes
that the overarching image of China was that of a uniquely large and
independent country that had the ability to restrict international trade, and
when they did partake in it, they maintained a formidable position. Concurrent
to this image was the view held by many (but not all) that China would benefit
from expanding its international trade, a view supported by the idea that their
history of fluctuating trade policies indicated that increasing foreign trade was
possible. Further, criticisms of European trade policies reveals that Europeans
did not assume the perfection of their own practices.
I. From El Dorado to Impervious: travel and trade literature on China
Little information travelled, and even less trade took place, between Europe and
China in the period between the collapse of the Sino-Roman trade in the fourth
century and Marco Polo’s account of Cathay at the end of the thirteenth century. It
was only with the expansion of the sea route to the coast of Southern China in 1514
and the rise of the printing press that the demand for goods from – and information
on – the Middle Kingdom could be met. In this period, trade, religion (Catholicism),
and information on China were intertwined. Portugal, for example, received the
padroado (patronage) with the Jus patronatus granted by a papal bull in 1514, vesting
exclusive control of European missionary, political and economic activity in the East
with the Portuguese monarchy. Their control of European engagement with the East
did not last long, and the Dutch and English quickly expanded their commercial
interests. Catholic missionaries from other European states such as Italy, Spain,
France and Germany continued to travel to and transmit information on China.
In their roles as translators and influencers of Chinese opinions, these European
missionaries acted in the interest of their own missionary orders, and at times in
their national interests. For instance, in 1697 and 1698 a group of French Jesuits
urged the French government to develop a chartered company for the China trade to
search for alternative trade routes from those controlled by the English and Dutch6.
6 D. F. Lach and E. J. van Kley, Asia in the making of Europe, 3 vols., 3 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1992), 432.
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207
Although the Jesuit missionaries were primarily concerned with their religious
mission, they did provide information highly relevant to the China trade7.
Another group that provided information about the China trade –
merchants, explorers, men of war and emissaries – was less interested in the
Christianizing agenda of the missionaries. The attempts to develop a trading
relationship with China led to the arrival of ambassadors from states such as
Russia, the Netherlands, France, and England as well as representatives from
their respective East India Companies. Between 1552 and 1800 there were
926 Jesuits in China. As early as 1563 there were already 700 Portuguese nonmissionaries in Macao8. Although these secular travelers offered less insightful
commentary than the Jesuits who gained access to the Chinese court, many
of these sources were continuously referred to and had a transformative
effect on European thought. They were also first-hand witnesses to China’s
restrictive trade policies and thus, on this topic in particular, their point of view
is germane. In the seventeenth century, merchant accounts from China were
primarily Dutch, as the Netherlands began to dominate the China trade9. By the
eighteenth century, British travelers made the most significant contribution to
the expansion of non-missionary accounts of China10. The interaction between
European national interests, missionary activity, commercial concerns, and
Chinese policy from the sixteenth century onwards was of great importance to
the formation of primary sources, and ultimately European views of China as a
political, economic and cultural entity.
These primary sources provided information for the editors of geographies.
The growth of these popular works over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
was in large part driven by the desire for information pertaining to the prospects
for international trade, and many of these sources had commercial ideologies
embedded in their texts11. Richard Hakluyt commissioned Robert Parke’s 1588
7 In particular, the Jesuits Matteo Ricci, Nicolas Trigault, Louis Le Comte and Jean Baptiste
Du Halde (who himself had never actually travelled to China, but did have access to Jesuit
information), provided first-hand information on the Chinese Empire.
8 A. Rowbotham, “The Impact of Confucianism on Seventeenth Century Europe”, The Far
Eastern Quarterly, 4 (1945): 50.
9 The Dutch fort in southern Taiwan was established in 1624, and though they were
anxious to trade with China, the embassies they sent to Peking in 1656, 1667 and 1685 all
failed. One of the most widely cited and translated works was Johan Nieuhof ’s An Embassy
from the East India Company (1665 Dutch edition, published in English in London, 1669).
Nieuhof ’s work was based on a Dutch East India Company delegation to China, which he
took part in from 1655-57.
10 The most popular example in this genre is George Anson’s Voyage Around the World (1748).
The first edition had over 1800 advanced subscribers, by 1776 there had been fifteen editions in
Britain alone and it had been translated into French, Dutch, German and Italian, C. Mackerras,
Western Images of China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 47.
11 R. Markley, The Far East and the English Imagination, 1600-1730. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 270.
208
English translation of the Spanish Augustian Juan González de Mendoza’s
description of China, which demonstrates this type of demand. Parke dedicated
his translation to the English explorer Thomas Cavandish who, he hoped, would
find a new trade route to Asia. Parke also praised the teenage King Edward VI for
his encouragement of the beneficial trade with the East 35 years earlier12. Another
example of the connection between trade and information on China is found in
the first English translation of the Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s description
of China, translated by Richard Brookes and printed by John Watts in 1736.
While it was the less reliable of the two English translations, of interest here
is Brooke’s motivation for the quick translation of the work. Brookes dedicated
the fourth volume “To the Directors of the United Company of Merchants of
England trading to the East Indies”13. In this dedication, Brookes noted: “It is a
fond mistaken Notion of some” that Britain is self-sustainable and does not need
anything from the rest of the world when “the most common Repast must be
supply’d with Ingredients from the remotest Parts of the Globe”14.
The final group of interested commentators was the philosophers of the
Enlightenment who debated the implications of the China trade. Douglas Irwin’s
intellectual history of free trade is divided into two parts: the pre-Smithian
protectionist view culminating in the mercantilist literature of the seventeenth
century, and the post-Smithian period of the triumph of the arguments for
free trade15. While these periods certainly overlapped, the eighteenth century
in particular represents a transitionary period, which is situated between the
apogee of the mercantilist view and the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of
Nations (1776). Prior to the establishment of a largely consensus view in favor of
free-market trade, philosophers debated policies of international trade.
The primary, geographical and philosophical sources oscillated between
optimism and disappointment in their discussions of the China trade. On the
one hand, there was an air of hope for the potential wealth that the China trade
could generate. The sixteenth century witnessed the start of a search for distant
lands that could offer easy profits. Popular literature of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries expressed the hope of finding foreign lands that offered
bountiful trade relationships. Voltaire commented on the dreams of easy profits
in his popular novel Candide (1759). Upon leaving El Dorado, Candide exclaims:
“if we return to our own world with only a dozen of El Dorado sheep, loaded with
12 J. Gonzales de Mendoza, The Historie of the Great and Mightie Kingdome of China, translated
by R. Parke, printed by I. Wolfe for Edward White in 1588 (Reprint: Amsterdam: Da Capo
Press, 1973), 2.
13 J. B. Du Halde, The General History of China. Containing a geographical, historical, chronological,
political and physical description of the empire of China, translated by Richard Brookes from the
Paris edition, 4 vols., 4 (London: printed by and for John Watts, 1736), Dedication.
14 Du Halde, Vol. 4, Dedication.
15 D. Irwin, Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1996), 3.
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209
the pebbles of this country, we shall be richer than all the kings in Europe”16.
The reports of the grand scale of the Chinese Empire, and its significant wealth,
came to represent another El Dorado, and a tangible object for the European
desire for profits.
However, Europeans expressed a concurrent frustration with the
practicalities involved in the China trade. The earliest descriptions of China
by European authors reveal a long history of the theme of Chinese isolation.
Ancient Romans described a place known as Serica (believed to refer to the
north-eastern part of modern day China). Pliny the Elder, for example, claimed
“The Seres are of inoffensive manners, but, bearing a strong resemblance
therein to all savage nations, they shun all intercourse with the rest of mankind,
and await the approach of those who wish to traffic with them”17. This history
was not lost on eighteenth century commentators, as a popular compendium
about China, The Chinese Traveller (1772), addressed the antiquity of the view
of Chinese isolation: “It is remarkable that the manners of the modern differ
not much from those of the ancient Chinese […] [Pliny] says that the Chinese
[…] like wild animals industriously shun any communication with strangers
[…]. They are at this day courteous and gentle, but will not suffer merchants
of other nations to penetrate into their country”18. Indeed, China’s restrictive
policies continued into the early modern world. In 1517, Tomé Pires led the first
official embassy from a European state (Portugal) to China. The reality of China’s
foreign policy quickly moderated the Portuguese enthusiasm when after their
long journey the Portuguese emissaries were not granted an audience with
the emperor. The Portuguese conquering of Malacca (a tributary state of the
Chinese), as well as their thieving and disruptive behavior around Canton led
to the Chinese constraints19. China sentenced Pires to death because of the
actions of his compatriots, and he took his own life in prison. The recurrence
of this archetypal embassy by the English, French, Dutch and Russians, despite
continuing failures to gain significant trade concessions, demonstrated the
European determination to expand the China trade20.
16 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), Candide, translated by Norman Cameron (London:
Penguin, 2001), 52.
17 Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, eds. J. Bostock and H. T. Riley (1885), Book VI, Chapter XX,
“The Seres”, ed. G. Crane (The Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University), 2036-2037.
18 Author/Editor Unknown, The Chinese Traveller […] Collected from Du Halde, Le Compte, and other
Modern Travellers, 1 (London: Printed for E. and C. Dilly, 1772), v.
19 J. E. Wills Jr., Embassies and Illusions: Dutch and Portuguese Envoys to K’ang-hsi (Cambridge:
Harvard University Asia Center, 1984), 19.
20 Between 1655 and 1795 there were approximately seventeen Western missions that reached
the emperor (six from Russia, four from Portugal, three or four from Holland, three from the
Papacy, and one from Britain). J. K. Fairbank, “Tributary Trade and China’s Relations with the West”,
The Far Eastern Quarterly, 1 (1942): 148-149. For more information on failed trade negotiations see
Markley, The Far East and the English Imagination, Ch. 3 and Wills, Embassies and Illusions.
210
The failure of early modern European trade missions reflected China’s
ability to resist the foreign overtures. Unlike other parts of the world, threats
of violence were insufficient to achieve the European desire for open trade with
China. Rather, Chinese trade concessions were erratic and highly dependent
on the emperor. The Chinese, according to John Wills Jr., never had anything
resembling “a coherent or effective foreign policy”21. These inconsistencies
were increasingly difficult for Europeans to understand as they rationalized
international trade as ordained or natural. Despite the idiosyncrasies of
Chinese policy, Europeans attempted to understand the principles behind their
reluctance to engage in international trade.
II. Understanding Chinese trade policy
Early descriptions of the Chinese, including those by the Jesuits, depicted an
arrogant nation who believed they were the center of the world. Addressing the
reluctance of the Chinese to partake in international trade, the Jesuits Matteo Ricci
and Nicolas Trigault concluded that “[Chinese] pride, it would seem, arises from
an ignorance of the existence of higher things and from the fact that they find
themselves far superior to the barbarous nations by which they are surrounded”22.
Or, as Thomas Salmon argued in his popular compendium, they looked upon “the
rest of mankind as little better than brutes”23. This assertion was supported by
the knowledge that the Chinese had access to the compass before the Europeans,
and yet explored little in comparison. However, Europeans sought to understand
China’s motivations for restricting trade beyond simple arrogance.
In the seventeenth century, numerous European observers respected China’s
policy of limiting international trade. The expansion of European interests
overseas, concurrent with internal wars, revolutions and the spread of disease,
reminded many early modern observers of the lessons from Ancient Rome, and
concerns about overexpansion led some to admire China’s restraint. One of the
early Iberian accounts of China by Gaspar da Cruz described how the Chinese
had a large empire earlier in their history, ruling over Malacca, Siam and Champa
in Southeast Asia. He explained their motivations for reducing this empire and
turning inwards: “the King of China, seeing that his kingdom went to decay,
21 Wills, Embassies and Illusions, 20.
22 Matteo Ricci and Nicolas Trigault’s De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas was an important source
of information about China at the time, and was one of the most widely cited (or plagiarised)
early modern primary accounts of China. First published in 1615, it had 4 Latin editions, 3
French editions, 1 edition respectively in German, Spanish, Italian and English excerpts were
reproduced in S. Purchas, His Pilgrimes […] (1625). N. Trigault and M. Ricci, China in the Sixteenth
Century: the journals of Matthew Ricci: 1583-1610 [The compilation by N. Trigault] translated from
the Latin by Louis J. Gallagher (New York: Random House, 1953), 23.
23 T. Salmon, Modern History: or, the present state of all nations […], 3 vols., 1 (London: Printed for T.
Longman, T. Osborne, et. al., 1744-463), 15.
european views of the china trade
211
and was in danger by their seeking to conquer many other foreign countries,
he withdrew himself with his men to his own kingdom”24. Edward Gibbon
chronicled this notion of internal decay from overexpansion in his influential
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776). Several European geographers and
philosophers praised China’s policy as wise. In Relazioni Universali (1591-1598),
Giovanni Botero explained China’s motivations for restricting foreign interaction
to protect their customs and government. He commended the Chinese disinterest
in international expansion because the author believed “there can bee no greater
folly than to hazard our own goods, on hope to gaine others”25. By the eighteenth
century a few European philosophers and geographers also explained China’s
caution towards entering into relationships with foreign states. For instance,
Guillaume-Thomas Raynal reminded his readers of the problems in the SinoPortuguese encounters during the time of Tomé Pires; under those circumstances,
what incentive did the Chinese have to expand their foreign relations26? However,
by the eighteenth century overseas trade and exploration increased and the
potential risks associated with it were outweighed by the perceived benefits.
Another explanation for China’s restrictive policies gained prominence in the
eighteenth century, though it originated in earlier sources. It was based on the
belief that China’s domestic trade made their Empire self-sufficient thus they had
no need for international commerce. Mendoza, who had never been to China
himself, was one of the first European authors to popularize this explanation.
He described how China’s isolation from international trade was possible
because they have sufficient of all things necessarie to the mainteining of human
life”27. The reports about the activity on China’s rivers and canals astonished
Mendoza: “In my opinion it might be said with greater truth and without fear of
exaggeration, that there are as many boats in this kingdom as can be counted up
in all the rest of the world”28. This argument was popularized in the eighteenth
century by Du Halde who controversially stated the vastness of China’s domestic
24 South China in the Sixteenth Century: Being the Narratives of Galeote Pereira, Fr. Gaspar da Cruz, O.P.,
Fr. Martin de Rada, O.E.S.A., ed. C. R. Boxer (Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2004), 67.
25 G. Botero, Relations, of the most famous Kingdoms and Common-weales through the World […]
(London: Printed for John Jaggard, 16084), 300 and 295. This excerpt was accurately translated
from the original Italian, see G. Botero, Delle Relationi Universali (Venetia: Nicolò Polo, 1602),
Parte Seconda, 66.
26 Though in the final edition these paragraphs were found in chapter twenty-one (which has
been attributed to Denis Diderot), the paragraphs in question were also in an earlier edition in a
section attributed to Raynal. G. T. Raynal and D. Diderot, A Philosophical and Political History of the
Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indes, translated by J. O. Justamond from
the 1780 French edition, 8 vols., 4 (London: printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1783), 192-193.
For the original French see G. T. Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du
commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Tome I. Livres I-V), eds. Anthony Strugnell, et.al. (Paris:
Centre International d’étude du XVIIIe Siècle and Ferney-Voltaire, 2010), 15.
27 Mendoza, Histoire [...] of China, 69-70.
28 Mendoza, Histoire [...] of China 12-13.
212
trade compared to that of the whole Europe: “The inland trade of China is so great,
that the commerce of all Europe is not to be compar’d therewith; the princes
like so many kingdoms, which communicate to each other their respective
productions”29. Made during a period of rapid expansion of European trade, this
bold assertion was repeated numerous times in popular compendiums30.
Philosophical sources differed in their assessment of the claim that China’s
domestic trade was larger than Europe’s. Montesquieu believed the argument
was irrelevant. In De l’esprit des lois (1748), he described the implications of
European global expansion. He argued, “Europe has reached such a high degree
of power that nothing in history is comparable to it”31. Immediately after
claiming European power and dominance, he felt the need to challenge the
relevance of Du Halde’s contention about the relative size of China’s domestic
trade, indicating his view that the claim challenged European supremacy.
He argued that China’s internal commerce might be larger than Europe’s but
European foreign trade was, in fact, much greater32.
A fellow Frenchman, François Quesnay, vehemently contested Montesquieu’s
view of China. In a section entitled “Commerce Viewed as Serving Agriculture”
in Le Despotisme de la Chine (1767), Quesnay used China as a model to attack the
belief that “nations must trade with foreigners in order to grow rich in money”33.
He repeated Du Halde’s assertion that China’s internal trade was greater than
Europe’s and that each Chinese province specialised in particular products,
making commerce between them necessary. Opposed to the mercantilist
view, Quesnay believed foreign commerce was injurious and served only to
profit the merchant class. He could not find an example of a nation attached to
foreign commerce and provided an example of prosperity. The Chinese system,
according to the Physiocrat, represented the Natural Order and thus he praised
their elevation of domestic trade above foreign commerce.
29 J. B. Du Halde, A description of the empire of China 2 vols., 1 (London: printed by T. Gardner
for Edward Cave, 1738), 334. Accurately translated from the original French see J. B. Du Halde,
Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique, et physique de l’empire de la Chine. 4
vols., 2 (La Haye: Chez P. G. Le Mercier, 1735), 169.
30 For instance a direct quotation can be found in The Chinese Traveller, 189; C. F. Lambert, A
Collection of curious Observations on the Manners, Customs, Usages, different Languages, Government
[…], 2 (London, 1750), 386.
31 C. L. de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, eds. A. M. Cohler, B. C. Miller
and H. S. Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 393. Accurately translated from
the original French see C.L. de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois (Genève:
Barillot et fils, 1748), 71.
32 Montesquieu, The Sprit of the Laws, 393. For the original French see Montesquieu, De l’esprit
des lois, 71.
33 F. Quesnay, Oeuvres Économiques et Philosophiques, ed. Auguste Oncken (Paris: Jules Peelman
and Co., 1888), 603. For the English translation see L. A. Maverick, China a Model for Europe
(San Antonia: Paul Anderson Co., 1946), 208. Quesnay published Despotisme de la Chine in four
consecutive editions of the journal Ephémérides du Citoyen.
european views of the china trade
213
Adam Smith, who had a great deal of respect for the French économiste, also
believed China was uniquely situated for domestic commerce and disagreed with
the mercantilist view of wealth, however he did believe in the benefits of foreign
trade. Smith argued China’s geography deterred it from foreign trade because its
neighbors were not rich and
the great extent of the empire of China, the vast multitude of its inhabitants,
the variety of climate, and consequently of productions in different provinces,
and easy communcation by means of water carriage between the greater part of
them render the home market of that country of so great extent, as to be alone
sufficient to support very great manufactures, and to admit of very considerable
subdivisions of labour34.
Following Du Halde’s and Quesnay’s assertion that Chinese products were
diversified, Smith argued that China had significant subdivisions of labor. From
the Scottish philosopher this was a great compliment indeed, as he asserted
in The Wealth of Nations (1776) that the division of labour was key to economic
growth. However, Smith moderated the assessment of the size of China’s
domestic trade claiming it was “not much more inferior to the market of all
the different countries of Europe put together”35. By the end of the eighteenth
century with European commerce rapidly expanding, even the tempered claim
that China’s domestic market was near the size of all of Europe’s and the view that
China had significant subdivisions of labor from its internal commerce were
both complimentary of the Chinese system.
Recognizing China’s self-sufficiency did not mean abandoning hope for its
engagement in an active international trade. Smith argued that “a more extensive
foreign trade […] could scarce fail to increase very much the manufactures of China,
and to improve very much the productive powers of its manufacturing industry”
as well as offering externalities such as extensive navigation, technology transfer
and “other improvements of art and industry”36. It was possible to understand
China’s reasons and respect its ability to limit foreign trade, and still believe that
a profitable trade was in its interest, and indeed was possible.
Primary authors, geographers and philosophers ruminated on China’s
unique reasons for restricting international trade, as well as its unusual ability
to garner significant wealth from internal commerce. China offered a different
model for growth that depended almost entirely on domestic consumption
and production. European observers and commentators demonstrated a more
complex understanding of Chinese policy than ignorant, arrogant isolationism,
and they were not assured of the superiority of their own trade practices.
34 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 865-6.
35 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 866.
36 Ibid.
214
III. A European problem? National rivalries and monopolies
While Europeans attempted to understand and even, at times, appreciate
China’s restrictions on international trade, the policies of the Middle Kingdom
also offered an opportunity to analyze European trade practices. Indeed, many
observers maintained that the European system itself was at fault for limiting
the China trade.
National rivalries, particularly between the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch
and English, led to competing European interests hindering advancements
in East Asian trade. During the first half of the seventeenth century, the
Dutch began to make their presence in East Asia felt. Unlike the Spanish and
Portuguese, the Protestant Dutch (and later the English) were not as concerned
with spreading Christianity, but focused their empires largely on commerce.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC), formed in 1602, was in direct conflict
with the Portuguese-declared monopoly of Asian trade. As such, the VOC was
given authority to “wage defensive war, negotiate treaties of peace and alliance
in the name of the States General, and build fortresses”37. This led to several
VOC attacks on the Portuguese establishment at Macao. Ultimately, the Dutch
gained a monopoly in the Japan trade and increased their presence in East Asia
throughout the seventeenth century. By 1685, with the opening of Canton to
foreign trade, the English began to assert their standing in the China trade.
The divided London and English East India companies formally united in 1708
giving the British a strong position in the East Indian trade.
The descriptions of European observers reveal the nationalism involved
in international trade with China – and the East Indies in general. In the
seventeenth century Johan Nieuhof, a VOC purser of a Dutch embassy to
China, publicized the tension between the Dutch and the Portuguese in the
Far East. He argued his mission to negotiate a free trade with the Chinese
government was doomed from that start because the Portuguese at Macao and
the Portuguese Jesuits in Peking had portrayed the Dutch as people dwellers
without a country who “got their livings by stealth and piracy”38. Raynal
repeated these descriptions in the eighteenth century, reminding his readers
how in 1607 the Dutch tried to open up the China trade but “The Portuguese
found means, by bribery, and the intrigues of their missionaries, to get the
Hollanders excluded”39. It became evident to European commentators,
through these sources, that conflicts between European countries greatly
affected trading relationships with China.
37 Lach and Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, 45.
38 J. Nieuhof, An Embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces, trans. John Ogilby
(London: Printed by the author at his house in White Friers, 16732), 154.
39 Raynal and Diderot, A Philosophical and Political History, Vol. 1, 246. For the original French see
Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique, 160.
european views of the china trade
215
England expressed similar frustrations over conflicts with the Portuguese
and the Dutch. Direct conflicts such as the 1623 Amboyna massacre of twenty
men, ten of whom were members of the British East India Company, by agents
of the VOC undoubtedly contributed to the tone of tracts on the China trade.
The national competitiveness led to a mistrust of information circulating on the
China trade: “The difficulty of trading with the Chineses in their own Country,
is not so difficult as the Portingals and Hollanders would perswade the World
for their own advantage”40. The anonymous author of this tract on the East India
Company argued that, despite the hindrances by the Portuguese, the English
have traded in Canton with great success.
Over the course of the eighteenth century, national rivalries were less
prominent explanations for the inability to establish a flourishing China trade.
European commentators began to argue the largest problem on the European
side of the trade was not the competition between countries, but rather the
lack of competition between companies, and the inability of any one European
power to impose a monopoly over the trade of China against rivals. This was a
result of the rising power of the European East India companies. The debate over
the impact of chartered companies and monopolies in the China trade featured
prominently in eighteenth century British popular sources, where many argued
against the monopolies and for the rights of individual merchants. For instance,
a letter addressed to the Aldermen of the City of London in 1754 attacked the
claim that free merchants did not have the ability to carry on the East India trade
in the same manner as the East India Company. The anonymous author argued
that “every one knows, that the trade to China may be carried on from Britain
directly, as it is from Sweden, and that, without a Company the same may be
done from all other parts”41. The high level of country trade (local trade that took
place in the East Indies) conducted by free merchants indicated their ability to
be successful and “they do not ruin themselves, nor do they lose the trade, or
give away all the profits to the natives”42.
In contrast to the idea that China was solely responsible for limiting the
number of ports where international trade could be conducted, some believed
this was a decision made by European East India companies. Joshua Gee, an
English merchant, argued that the English East India Company was at fault
for limiting the China trade, and in particular, the number of ports at which
international trade was conducted. He believed that although the sales of British
woollen goods would be higher in the colder, northern Chinese provinces, the
40 Unknown Author, The East-India trade [n. p.] [1641?] (The Making of the Modern World,
Thomson Gale, University of London Research Library Services), 8.
41 Letters relating to the East India Company […] (London: Printed for W. Owen, 1754), 24. This
work has been attributed to John Campbell.
42 A Third Collection of scarce and valuable Tracts, on the most interesting and entertaining subjects […],
4 vols., 3 (London: Printed for F. Cogan, 1751). 212.
216
English captains chose to stay at Canton. According to Gee, private traders knew
better: “But when private traders had liberty to go to China, they were of another
opinion; they went to those places where they could get most money”43. Indeed,
in reality, the East India companies hindered the China trade. E.H. Pritchard
points out that the English abandoned their factories at the ports of Amoy and
Chusan in 1707 and 1710 respectively because of the favorable possibilities of
trade at Canton. This was well before the 1757 official Chinese restriction of
foreign trade to Canton44. A popular dictionary of trade in the eighteenth century
described the “inducement which the European merchants have to frequent
Canton” in comparison to Amoy, namely that whole fleets “may be freighted in
a short time there, and are not in danger of being delayed til the monsoon sets
in […]”45. By 1740, the British met with a solid monopoly in Canton, the Hong
Merchants (a small group of elite merchants who dominated the entire Canton
trade). By 1762, to combat the strength of the Hong monopoly, the English East
India Company created one unified council to regulate all of its ships. Thus the
trade was a dual monopoly where the interests of both China and Britain were
represented, and vehemently defended.
Enlightenment philosophers, especially those of the Scottish Enlightenment,
devoted a great deal of time to analyzing the distorting nature of these chartered
companies. David Hume was one of the first prominent scholars to point out
those European actions that hindered the China trade (particularly as expressed
by the varying prices in gold and silver): “Thus the immense distance of
China, together with the monopolies of our India companies, obstructing the
communication, preserve in Europe the gold and silver, especially the latter, in
much greater plenty than they are found in that kingdom”46. Later, Adam Smith
also pointed to the negative impact of the monopolistic system. If, as he argued,
“rich and civilized nations can always exchange to a much greater value with
one another than with savages and barbarians”, he had to explain how Europe
has “derived much less advantage from its commerce with the East Indies from
that with America”. To answer this puzzle he did not turn to descriptions of
43 J. Gee, The Trade and Navigation of Great Britain considered […] A new edition […] by a merchant
(London: printed for J. Almon, 1767), 61; A. Dalrymple, A Plan for extending the Commerce of this
Kingdom, and of the East-India-Company (London: printed for the author, 1769), 7 also describes
the high demand for wool in China but being limited by the trade at Canton, which was further
away from the cold areas of the empire.
44 E. H. Pritchard, The Crucial Years of Early Anglo-Chinese Relations, 1750-1800 (1936), reprinted in
Britain and the China Trade, 1635-1842, ed. P. Tuck, 10 vols., 5 (London-New York: Routledge, 1999), 114.
45 R. Rolt, A New Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, compiled from the Information of the most
eminent Merchants, and from the works of the best writers (London: printed for T. Osborne, J.
Shipton, et. al., 1756), 130.
46 D. Hume, “Of the Balance of Trade”, in Essays Moral, Political, Literary, ed. E. F. Miller, with
an appendix of variant readings from the 1889 edition by T. H. Green and T. H. Grose, revised
edition (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987).
european views of the china trade
217
isolationism, but rather blamed the fact that the “Portuguese monopolized the
East India trade to themselves for about a century” and when the Dutch began
in the seventeenth century to expand in that area, “they vested their whole East
India commerce in an exclusive company”. He continued on:
The English, French, Swedes, and Danes have all followed their example, so that no
great nation in Europe has ever yet had the benefit of a free commerce to the East
Indies. No other reason need by assigned why it has never been so advantageous as the
trade to America, which, between almost every nation of Europe and its own colonies,
is free to all its subjects47.
While Smith recognized the Chinese reasons for restricting foreign trade, he also
attributed some of the blame to the European system of national monopolies.
European observers and commentators recognized the European policies
that hindered the China trade, particularly the influence of national rivalries
and the existence of competing monopolies. The China trade was used to reflect
on the flaws in thier own theories and policies. Europeans did not assume their
foreign trade practices were superlative. Smith believed China would improve
if it expanded its foreign trade. However, he also argued European countries
would grow if they revised their own trade practices.
IV. Power dynamics in the China trade
Although the primary sources, geographers and philosophers attempted to
understand the limitations of the China trade (both from the Chinese and European
perspectives), they were also aware that some international trade did exist. In this
trade China maintained a strong position and Europeans debated whether this
commerce hindered or helped expand the wealth of their own countries.
From knowledge of active Chinese encouragement of foreign trade, to the
numerous ways in which Europeans and Chinese merchants could exchange
goods without formal permissions, Europeans of the Enlightenment realized
that while China restricted its trade, the country it was never completely
isolated. During the Ming Dynasty, European sources described how some
foreign trade with China occurred under the guise of tribute, a context that gave
the Chinese a dominant position in the relationship48. However, the Europeans
sent few missions to the court of China, and the missions that were sent did
not submit to tributary status. There was also an understanding that policies
did not always dictate reality and subterfuge trade existed. For instance, Richard
47 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 564.
48 For instance see O. Dapper, Atlas Chinensis, trans. John Ogilby (London, 1671), 2. Note the title
page misattributes this work to Arnoldus Montanus, whose text on Japan was published by
Ogilby the previous year. Dapper’s work was a second edition to Nieuhof’s account of the Dutch
East India Company embassy to China.
218
Rolt in a dictionary on trade and commerce noted “the exportation of gold is
prohibited in China; but the magistrates, notwithstanding, will privately sell it
to the Europeans”49. Finally, primary reports indicated the Chinese took part in
country trade50.
With the transition from the Ming to Qing Dynasty in 1644, primary sources
of information reported China’s active encouragement of international trade. The
Jesuit Louis Le Comte’s Nouveaux Mémoires (1696) was one of the first sources to
explain the effect that dynastic change had on the China trade. He described the
tenth “principle maxim” of Qing policy “to encourage trade as much as possible
thro’ the whole empire [… and] to increase commerce, foreigners have been
permitted to come into the ports of China, a thing till lately never known”51. In
the eighteenth century, Du Halde reiterated these changes in Chinese policy and
pointed out that the ports had been opened to all nations, though adding the
qualifications that it was only the port of Canton that is open to Europeans, and
then only at certain times of the year, and even then they must anchor outside
the port52. In spite of these limitations, a belief remained that China still offered
opportunities for trade. The secular primary authors also described China’s active
encouragement of foreign trade. For instance, a description of Laurence Lange’s
envoy to China in 1717 published in John Green’s A New General Collection of Voyages
(1745-7) claimed the Kang-Hsi Emperor gave money from his own treasury to
encourage Chinese merchants to trade with the visiting Russians. He also reported
that when the Russians could not find vent for their goods the Emperor removed
duties on trade, which cost him 20, 000 ounces of silver53. Thus, Europeans were
aware of the trade that existed and of the changes in the Chinese policy.
Whether the China trade was beneficial to European countries, however, was a
more contentious topic. From 1699 to 1751 an estimated ninety percent of British
exports to China was silver54. In exchange for the silver, the English primarily
49 Rolt, A New Dictionary, 130.
50 L. Le Comte, Memoirs and Observations typographical, physical, mathematical, mechanical,
natural, civil, and ecclesiastical, made in a late Journey through the Empire of China […], translated
from the Paris edition (London: Printed for B. Tooke and Sam Buckley, 1697), 290. Accurately
translated from the original French see L. Le Comte, Nouveaux mémoires sur l’état présent de la
Chine, 2 vols., 2 (Paris: Chez Jean Anisson, 16972), 74; Thomas Salmon’s reiterated this point
in the eighteenth century, describing how the Chinese carried merchandise within the
Indian seas, particularly to India, Japan, the Philippines, and Java, where they then trade with
Europeans. Salmon, 461.
51 Le Comte, Memoirs and observations, 290. For the original French see Le Comte, Nouveaux
mémoires, Vol. 2, 73.
52 Du Halde, A Description of the Empire of China, Vol. 1, 335. For the original French see Du Halde,
Description géographique, Vol. 2, 173.
53 Astley and Green, A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 4, 579.
54 H. B. Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635-1834, 4 vols., 1 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1926-29), 307-313.
european views of the china trade
219
received luxury goods from China such as porcelain, silk and tea55. The China
trade was large enough that it enabled the development of a chinoiserie trend in
Europe, and caused some concern over the balance of trade56. Though antithetical
to the idea that China was isolating itself from significant European trade, the
commerce with China occasioned debate over the implications of the massive
influx of Chinese luxury goods in exchange for European precious metals.
Before the sea route to East Asia was sufficiently opened to expand the China
trade in the seventeenth century, there was little discussion about the balance of
trade. For instance, in the sixteenth century, Mendoza did not express concern
about the influx of goods from China, but this is not surprising as the significant
flow of goods from China was yet to begin, and there was still hope that China
would begin to accept European manufactured goods (not just silver). However,
as trade increased, the debate over balance of trade intensified and by the
seventeenth century, foreign trade was an extremely divisive topic. The group
referred to as the mercantilists were diverse and the common traits that bind
them historiographically are disputed57. A sub-category of mercantilists labeled
“bullionists” viewed the outward flow of silver in terms of the export of wealth
(an idea that originated in earlier Spanish debates).
The varying views of the intrinsic value of money fundamentally shaped
the balance of trade debate. Revisionist economic historians argue that silver
should be regarded as a commodity rather than ‘money’. Many primary authors
and Enlightenment geographers and philosophers agreed with this perspective
and recognized the arbitrage profits from the silver trade to China. Thomas
Astley’s popular travel collection described how Europe’s increasing trade with
China led to goods such as “cloths, crystals, swords, clocks, striking-watches,
repeating-clocks, telescopes, looking-glasses, etc” becoming “as cheap as in
Europe […] so that at present there is no trading to Advantage with any-thing
but Silver in China; where considerable profit may be made by purchasing gold,
which is a commodity there”58.
55 H. Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800, 2 vols., 2 (Minnesota: University of
Minnesota Press, 1976), 127 and 175.
��The extent to which China was isolated is debated by a group of global economic historians
deemed “Eurocentrists” such as E. L. Jones, The European Miracle (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981) and D. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (New York: W. W. Norton
and Co., 1998) who maintain that China turned inwards; and “revisionists”, such as J. M. Blaut,
Eight Eurocentric Historians (New York: The Guilford Press, 2000), who admits that the Chinese
government discouraged, and at times prohibited, oceanic trade, but nonetheless argues an
intense level of trade occurred in spite of these restrictions.
57 See D. C. Coleman, “Mercantilism Revisited”, The Historical Journal, 23 (1980): 773-791
for a review of the historiographical problems surrounding the study of mercantilism. E. F.
Heckscher, Mercantilism, ed. E. F. Söderlund, 2 vols. (London: George Allen and Unwin, 19552).
58 Astley and Green, A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels, 4 vols., 125. The same
argument was made in The modern part of an universal history […], 44 vols., 8 (London: Printed for
S. Richardson, et. al., 1759), 238.
220
The drainage of specie to China did not concern Adam Smith, as the staunch
anti-mercantilist viewed silver as a commodity. He argued that there were two
consequences of the annual exportation of silver to the East Indies: the first
was that plate was somewhat more expensive in Europe, and the second that
coined silver rose in value. However, Smith maintained that these consequences
were “too insignificant to deserve any part of the public attention”59. Not all
philosophers agreed. In 1732 Richard Cantillon, an Irish author, argued for
maintaining a favorable balance of trade, which to him meant exporting
manufactured products60. He believed the East India trade was profitable to the
Dutch Republic, at the expense of the rest of Europe, because the Dutch traded
the Eastern goods to Germany, Italy, Spain and the new World in return for
money, which they sent to the Indies to buy more goods. While his view on the
balance of trade slowly lost currency, Cantillon was an early observer of the global
dimensions of the trade network and the place of the East India trade within it61.
Popular geographies also identified the importance of China in global trade.
For instance, a geography by Joseph Randall, a schoolteacher and agriculturalist,
published in 1743 demonstrated awareness that trade was not bilateral and deficits
should not be considered in isolation of the global system. Describing the East Indies
trade, he argued British exports to China, India and Persia, which included bullion,
clothes and several other items were exchanged for goods such as china-ware, tea,
and cabinets “of which, ‘tis supposed, as much is re-exported to foreign nations, as
repays all the bullion carried to these places, and a considerable balance besides”62.
Discussion of global trading linkages reveals the integral part that China had in
the international trade system. In this sense, Eurocentrism and Sinocentrism both
misrepresent the diversity of European worldviews in the eighteenth century,
where many contemplated the multiple poles involved in global trade.
Over the course of the eighteenth century, as the support for mercantilism
waned, there was less concern over the negative balance of trade with China.
Although China sold European luxury goods in exchange for precious metals, the
trade was recognized as part of a larger system of global commerce. Views of the
China trade were not stagnant over the early modern period. European observers
also understood that China’s trade policy changed and the Middle Kingdom was
not as absolutely chained to their ancient maxims as previously supposed. The
actual trade reflected an image of China as powerful and not entirely inflexible.
59 Smith, Wealth of Nations, 565.
60 R. Cantillon, Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général, ed. and transl. H. Higgs, C. B. Reissued
for The Royal Economic Society by Frank Cass and Co., LTD. (London, 1959), Part III, Chapter
I: ‘Of Foreign Trade’.
61 Montesquieu also described the global trade system that connected the Americas, Asia, Africa
and Europe. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 392. For the original French see Montesquieu, De
l’esprit des lois, 71.
62 J. Randall, A System of Geography; or, a Dissertation on the Creation and various Phoenomena of the
Terraqueous Globe […] (London: printed for J. Lord, 1744), 344.
european views of the china trade
221
VI. Conclusion
By the end of the eighteenth century Europeans were still looking for solutions
to expand the China trade. Alexander Dalrymple – a Scottish born East India
Company traveler and researcher who spent time in Canton tirelessly trying to
develop a more open international commerce – argued in 1769 that the China
trade should be moved from Canton to Balambangan Island, near Borneo, where
the duties would be less and trade would be freer. He pointed out this was also
in the interest of the Chinese merchants who could be freed from the Hong
Merchants, whom they had to pay to preserve their privileges63. In a neutral land,
both the British and Chinese merchants would benefit from independence from
their respective governments. This perspective allies the interests of the British
and Chinese governments against British and Chinese merchants. Dalrymple’s
suggestion reflects how the linear story of Europeans entering the modern
world with Smith’s advocation of the free market while the Chinese stagnated
due to isolationism, fails to capture the nuanced views and various agendas of
eighteenth century observers.
The comments in geographical, philosophical and primary works available
in Europe indicate a well-rounded and complex understanding of China’s policy
towards foreign trade. First, there was an appreciation of China’s motivations
and unique ability to focus inward and rely on internal markets throughout
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Second, the problems contributing
to the difficult trade relationship were not always seen as stemming from the
Chinese. National rivalries and the monopolistic system of the European trading
companies were deemed hindering forces on the European side. Finally, there was
awareness of actual trade and of active Chinese encouragement of foreign trade,
as well as knowledge that China’s formal policy did not always dictate reality.
The debate over the balance of trade with China reveals an understanding of the
multiple poles involved in global commerce. The narrative of Chinese isolation
was not a post-Enlightenment construction; however, it reflects only part of a
wider context of the early modern discussion on the China trade that points to
European commentators and observers who understood China’s unique capacity
to gain wealth from domestic trade; who did not assume the superiority of their
trading policies; and who recognized China’s integral place in the early modern
world.
63 Alexander Darlymple, A Full and Clear Proof that the Spaniards can have no Claim to Balambangan
(London: J. Nourse, 1774), 13-16 and 96.
222